A Noir Thriller About Sacrifice and Desperation | That Night's Wife
Time to talk about That Night’s Wife, if you know what I mean…Ozu’s contemplative silent film from 1930 about familial love, morality and desperation.
What did you think I meant?
Fair warning, spoilers ahead and if you have any interest in watching this film (and I think you should) go watch and come back. I wish I had known less going into this one.
That Night’s Wife is a 1930 silent film from Yasujiro Ozu that starts out as a noir thriller. We travel around the dramatically lit city streets when a burglary takes place. And this burglary and the subsequent chase is exciting. I especially love how Ozu brings us into the action, we start out at the police station when they get a call. We see it’s a man in a darkened room calling for help. As he’s dragged away we stay on the phone, the receiver being yanked from the base and falling to the floor, then, suddenly we’re looking down the barrel of a gun and we pull back to reveal our villain.
Then we’re in an apartment with a mother and her sick child who may not make it through the night. And this is where I wish I knew less, the synopsis on the Criterion Channel gives away the twist (if you want to call it that)…
“In noirish darkness, a man commits a shocking robbery. But, as we soon learn, this seeming criminal mastermind is actually a sensitive everyman driven to desperation by the need to provide for his family.”
That will teach me to read a synopsis. Going in I already knew that the man committing the burglary was the father of the sick child. He’s out burgaling in an attempt to get some cash to help her. Maybe I would have figured that out, they talk about the father being out of the house. Just from that tense opening, you can tell that Ozu has such control over how he wants his story to unfold that I felt like I missed out on discovering things how he wanted me to…it doesn’t affect anything, but I couldn’t help thinking about it as I watched.
Anyway, the real “action” of the film begins when a police officer shows up at the house looking to arrest the father, Shuji. I’ve read people saying that the movie “slows down” when we get to the apartment and I guess I can understand that, but I would say that the film tightens. Ozu has managed to put these three characters into a really tense situation with lots of conflicting motivations. Shuji doesn’t want to leave his daughter, but to do that he can’t get arrested. The mother, Mayumi, wants to protect her husband, but is also disappointed in what he did and is forced to do things she would never do. The police officer wants to “get his man,” but once the situation is revealed to him he empathizes with the family.
And Ozu does a great job of constantly shifting the power dynamics in the room. When the police officer first arrives he’s in charge, on the hunt for the burglar, but when the wife gets both guns she’s the one running the show. Then she falls asleep and the police officer gets the guns back. And ultimately the father takes back his own power by turning himself in even though he’s given the opportunity to escape after he’s learned that his daughter is past the worst of her illness and she’ll continue to get better with care.
I don’t know much about Japanese history, this is 1930 so, as far as I understand, the country wasn’t doing all that well economically and they were headed towards fascism with an idea that they would grow their empire. That could be very reductive, don’t hold me to any of that. But I wonder how this fits into the times because, in my opinion, the father makes a really bad decision. The police officer, not wanting to take a father away from his sick daughter who was just trying to get some money to save her, didn’t want to arrest him! It’s heavily implied that he fakes falling asleep so that the husband can get away. And was just going to call it a day and head out, letting the family leave in peace. He had the money that was stolen, so that wasn’t a problem. But the father comes back and turns himself in, because of honor? Is it a cultural thing? Was this a bittersweet ending in Japan? It’s a shame he was arrested, but he did the right thing? Because how I see it…he made a TERRIBLE decision! Literally no harm would come to anyone by him getting away and instead of a happy ending where everything turns out okay we get this senselessly tragic ending where no one gets what they want.
The father goes to jail, the daughter and mother are left alone and the police officer has to arrest a man he just wants to leave in peace. Come on Shuji!
Also, why is it called That Night’s Wife?! Is that a translation thing? Is it because the wife was acting in ways that she would never act before and so she was that kind of wife for that one night? Am I just being dense? Yes. Always.
